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Behind the Scenes at MIT's Network
BobB writes "MIT's head of computer networks and security gives an inside look at how the techie school is fending off hackers, cranking up its network to handle voice over IP and become a fiber network operator to link to other research institutions. From the article: 'Q - How do you actually enforce security standards among MIT's departments and network users? A - Enforce is not a word you can use at MIT. We try to entice people to do the right thing. We've made a lot of progress. We've removed the financial incentive to run your own network, which used to be cheaper than having us do it. We've been a cost-recovery network since forever now though. At many universities the network is free and they just fund it out of operating costs.'"
great idea, just make Linux significantly more user friendly for computer illiterate people and then it will succeed.
IST? Are you sure you don't mean ITS?
As far as DHCP needing registered MACs, you're half right. If you need your computer to only use one IP address, then yes, you would need to "lock-in" a MAC address to that IP in the DHCP configuration. If you don't mind who gets what IP, you can just set up a pool of addresses and let DHCP assign leases to those addresses for a period of time -- not good for something such as a web server. The latter is what most home routers do for wired connections.
The parent poster is a student at MIT. You're obviously not.
He doesn't mean ITS. He means IST, the on-campus group that keeps the networks running. They have little cars that they use to run around campus and fix stuff that breaks.
As for needing to register MACs, he's talking about the MIT network specifically, not DHCP in general, so he's completely right, not half right. The MIT wireless will refuse to hand you an IP address until you register your MAC and provide credentials (either by logging in, or by identifying yourself as a visitor). Students have to clone the MAC addresses of DS's and Wiis temporarily so that they can register those MACs in order to get them on the network.